John 17: 1-11

Jottings on John…Easter 7… Revised 2020 

My class of theologs is shocked to hear a usually deadly dull lecturer say “Your prayers don’t go past this ceiling!”. When we realise what he means, we think, well, all is not quite lost after all! 

The second relates to a young woman whose marriage is suddenly broken off by her fiance. She speaks with me after the bombshell is dropped. Clearly in a state of shock, she says to me, “Fr. Brian, I’ve been praying to myself often about this, but I’m not getting an answer!” Do we see a problem here?

Apart from His teaching us to pray the ‘Lord’s Prayer’ here we have Jesus’ most important teaching on prayer. What seems important is that we take on board the example Jesus Himself  praying shows us here.

John features ‘glory’ Big Time. Not least in seeing Jesus’ death on the cross as His being glorified & God being glorified in Him. Now, 6 times in these few verses, Jesus uses forms of the word ‘glory’. Here we are privileged to watch & hear Jesus the Christ praying. In the closest communion with God a human being has ever been, can ever be. Letting us in on the inside to watch & hear Himself praying in a unique level of communion; of at-one-ness. With God, the Source of His being & ours.

Jesus is holding out to us the possibility of becoming so close to God, having, dare I say, an ‘insider’s view’ of God’ - we can hold the kind of conversation with God that Jesus does. Have the same quality of relationship with God. Are we, any of us, thinking, if not saying, ‘In your dreams!’? 

If so, can we grasp we’re on the Way to becoming so close to God we can experience such a relationship & not simply dream of it? No ceiling cutting off our prayers; no talking with oneself! 

Brian

Afterthought: Does our ceiling shut out, or open up to reveal new possibilities? Are we using ours to include or exclude? To exclude what is clearly evil is hard to quibble with, but what about when we are unclear? Who gets the benefit of the doubt? In the Scriptures we often see Jesus giving the benefit of the doubt to a lot of people we might understand as a bit ‘iffy’ & keep on the outside rather than letting them in. If God in Christ & by Holy Spirit is prepared to accept a person as ‘iffy’ as I am, who am I to argue for keeping them out of the Kingdom of the ‘iffy’?